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Man in Dallas Diagnosed with Ebola Had Contact with Victim in Liberia

Thomas Eric Duncan Accompanied Victim to Hospital in Liberian Capital

An Ebola task force came to the Monrovia, Liberia neighborhood of Thomas Duncan, the first man in American diagnosed with Ebola, to do contact tracing and sensitizing in a community that has already lost many members to Ebola.
Glenna Gordon for The Wall Street Journal

MONROVIA, Liberia—Before the first man diagnosed in the U.S. with Ebola landed in Texas, he escorted a woman to a treatment ward in Liberia’s capital where she was turned away and died of the virus within hours, even as their neighbors blocked local health workers from surveying for the disease.

The journey of
Thomas Eric Duncan
from a neighborhood of tin-roof houses in a West African capital to an isolation ward of a Dallas hospital is a story of how misunderstanding, fear and suspicion helped spread the disease across five African countries and now, to the shores of the U.S.

On Sept. 16, several health workers arrived in Mr. Duncan’s neighborhood in Monrovia to investigate a report that a pregnant 18-year-old woman, recently sent home from a nearby clinic, had shown Ebola symptoms that included a fever, vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding, said
Prince Toe
and other members of the Ebola Response Team in the capital’s 72nd community.

But when the team arrived in the neighborhood, residents insisted the pregnant teenager had been in a car accident, said Mr. Toe, the unit’s supervisor. When the neighbors grew rowdy at being pressed for information, the team turned back, he said.

Soon after returning later that day to the one-room home he rented from the teenager’s mother, Mr. Duncan accompanied the girl, known as Ms. Williams, in a taxi to an Ebola ward. When they were told the ward was full, the two went home, said
Irene Seyou,
Mr. Duncan’s next-door neighbor.

The U.S. government and its allies have been in a desperate hunt for health workers who have the skills and courage to care for thousands suffering from ebola. Betsy McKay reports on the News Hub. Photo: Getty.

When they came back to the neighborhood, Mr. Duncan lifted Ms. Williams by her legs from the taxi, Ms. Seyou said. Hours later, Ms. Williams died. Blood trickled from both sides of her mouth as one of her neighbors,
Mark Kputo,
23, carried away her body, protected only by a pair of gloves. “I and her were best of friends,” he said.

The next day, the health workers, known as contact tracers, returned to the 72nd community, now certain they were dealing with another Ebola case. But again, they were greeted with suspicion and hostility—this time from neighbors as they gathered to pay their respects to Ms. Williams’s family. The crowd insisted she had died of low blood pressure, Mr. Toe said.

The team’s worries about violence weren’t unfounded. They had previously been threatened with knives and pelted by stones. In nearby Guinea, a mob killed eight aid workers and journalists researching Ebola, and dumped their bodies into a village latrine in September. So Mr. Toe’s team retreated again.

The fears of the residents of Monrovia’s 72nd community weren’t unfounded, either. The diagnosis of one person with Ebola has led in several instances to the quarantining of entire neighborhoods.

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The next day, shortly before noon, Mr. Duncan, a driver, left his one-room home for America, hoisting his rolling suitcase over the mud and a backpack over his shoulders,visibly excited about joining his son in the U.S., Ms. Seyou said. He hoped to stay for two years.

“He was happy,” she recalled. “He said he was going to live his life.”

Members of Mr. Duncan’s family couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

At Liberia’s airport, the temperatures of arriving and departing passengers are checked three times by security guards—at the entrance, before the check-in desk and at the metal detectors— to screen out those who display Ebola’s hallmark symptom, a fever.

Passengers were asked to fill out questionnaires about whether they had been in contact with any Ebola victims. Mr. Duncan lied on those forms—and will be prosecuted for doing so upon his return—the Associated Press reported Liberia’s government as saying on Thursday.

The failure to bar Mr. Duncan from leaving Liberia now resounds with big implications for Dallas, where he has been diagnosed with the virus. Mr. Duncan developed symptoms of the disease four days after arriving in the city to visit a woman with whom he shares a child. But it took another four days for doctors to recognize he might have Ebola and to isolate him. By that time, he had exposed at least a dozen people in the Dallas area to the disease, health authorities say.

Around 100 people are now being screened for potential exposure to Ebola in Texas, CDC Director
Tom Frieden
said on Thursday.

In the community near where Thomas Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in America, lived in Monrovia, Liberia, chaos reigned as children cried and feared they would be taken away as others have been taken before
Glenna Gordon for The Wall Street Journal

The lapse also grows out of a single decision by Liberia’s government: In August, shortly after Ebola first struck the country’s capital, President
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
defied World Health Organization recommendations and quarantined the hardest-hit neighborhood.

Government officials now say they regret that decision. Instead of halting the disease, the measure terrified people. Residents of Mr. Duncan’s neighborhood, say they were afraid to report an Ebola case because they would be quarantined.

On Thursday, a half dozen children around Mr. Duncan’s home in Monrovia were loudly sobbing, despite assurances from adults they wouldn’t be taken from their homes. Many of the adults were crying, too.

“Our plan is to quarantine this entire community,” said Mr. Toe, while the children wailed. “They’ll stay here.”

A second member of the tracing team blamed the woman’s neighbors. “They said it was a car accident!” said
Bishop Amos Sesay.
“They are lying!”

Nearby, government workers were distributing gloves and other sanitary equipment.
Mariam Wilefe’s
body shook as she watched: Her hair had been recently braided by Ms. Williams, the pregnant Ebola victim.

Martu Meeforo,
a 37-year-old mother, wailed: “If only people knew!”

—Glenna Gordon in Monroviaand Betsy McKay in New Yorkcontributed to this article.